Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes says if you're going to be an arse, work-life is going to be a lot harder. Picture: Claire Porter Source: Supplied

Tech entrepreneur says people shouldn't develop ideas for money

Believes work needs to be fun

He runs a company of more than 750 employees worldwide

"IF you're in this business to make money, I'm absolutely not interested."

This is the stern advice of Mike Cannon-Brooks, the CEO of Australian multi-million dollar software company, Atlassian.

He and co-founder Scott Farquhar created the business together fresh out of university at the tender ages of 22. Over the past two years Atlassian – who sells products to help businesses build software – has grown from a team of around 170 people to more than 750 employees in offices around the world in San Francisco, Amsterdam, Poland, Malaysia, Brazil and Vietnam.

Pretty good for a guy that hasn't yet cracked 35.

The secret to success is care more about the product than the money.

"Too many people these days I meet and scrutinise them for all sorts of investment reasons and other things I'm involved in and it is the first weed-out question for me," he told news.com.au. "It doesn't matter if you have a spreadsheet showing that your idea is going to make you a billion dollars. If that's why you’re doing it, I'm absolutely not interested."

Fromvending machines to pool tables, the Atlassian offices are designed to make you never want to leave. Picture: Claire PorterSource: Supplied

"If I were going to give people advice about how to run a start-up, I'd tell them to build something they're passionate about in arms of the product domain," he said. "I see too many entrepreneurs who go into business to make money. I've never met a good entrepreneur who did that."

Cannon-Brooks is not an out-of-the-mould type entrepreneur. His company has zero sales guys. Zero. Atlassian lives and dies by the quality of the products it produces. They also have a great website and a team of marketers to get them there.

"If we go with a sales guy he's going to have a lot of persuasive language about why his product is better than ours and it's going to be very hard for us to do that to win the 1 on 1 battle," Cannon-Brooks explains. "But in the 100 on 100 battle, they can't have enough sales people to go and fight 100 different battles at the same battle."

"Using the website, every person on the planet can try our stuff and you don't have to have armies and armies of sales people to do it".

Sales guys also turn out to be very expensive. And that affects the price of the software.

Fromvending machines to pool tables, the Atlassian offices are designed to make you never want to leave. Picture: Claire PorterSource: Supplied

"It comes down to software being more expensive," he says. "If you pay $100,000 for a bit of software, $75,000 of that is going to the sales people who sell you the software and only $25,00 has gone into building it."

"Whereas we say if we can just spend the $25,000 on building it then we can sell it for $25,000 so we have a cost advantage over almost all of our competitors about the price we sell our products."

Cannon-Brookes is self-deprecating about his achievements. But he hasn't just created a business, he has created an ecosystem that has allowed it to thrive. Having studied architecture at university, he understands the importance that space plays in creativity, and he has sculpted each and every work place accordingly.

The offices in Sydney's CBD are decked out with pool tables, bean bags, a fully stocked kitchen complete with vending machines, lolly jars, cereal, tea, pretty much anything you could ask for, including a bar. Though there are very strict rules as to when the bar can be used.

"Jam sessions" are regular after-work occurrences where workers grab whatever instruments they can play and head over to one of the many, many rooms in the place to make sweet music.

From pool tables to bean bags, the Atlassian offices are designed to make you never want to leave. Picture: Claire PorterSource: Supplied

The entire building, including its fire escapes are equipped with wi-fi so staffers can work wherever they think they will be most effective.

"It's something I’ve always been interested in since I was 18. I was always going to be an architect up until then so now I get to indulge by DNA building offices."

Utterly low key, dressed in jeans and a baseball cap, Cannon-Brookes epitomises the Silicone Valley culture of skill over style.

He believes work should be fun. And why not? It's the thing we're all going to spend the rest of our lives doing.

"If you’re not doing it because it’s fun then do something else," he says. "Life is too short."

Also, don’t be an arse.

"If you're an arse it's going to be a lot more difficult," he says.

Sound advice to live by.

Mike Cannon-Brooks was part of news.com.au's Blackberry Young Tech Entrepreneur series we have been running in recent weeks. This year's winner is Matt Barrie from freelancer.com. Our reader winner is G. Shofer - who will receive the new Blackberry Z10 phone and $1000 cash.

Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes says if you're going to be an arse, work-life is going to be a lot harder. Picture: Claire PorterSource: Supplied

A NOTE ABOUT RELEVANT ADVERTISING: We collect information about the content (including ads) you use across this site and use it to make both advertising and content more relevant to you on our network and other sites.